Social Networking

Exercise

It’s the holiday season, things are crazy, and finding time to do everything I am supposed to do and add in Christmas Shopping, present wrapping, cleaning the house to get it company ready and all that… just wow.

Life is stressing me out right now, a lot. I’ve found my focus in exercise, running seems to help me open up my mind, clear my head, and since the beginning it’s made me feel like my Father is with me. Any time I need to feel my Dad’s presence in my life I just put feet to pavement and off we go. Some people will find that strange, some will understand it, my only explanation for it is that I know, if there really is a place that our loved ones go after they leave us, where they can look out for us, that my Dad is there looking out for me. I know he wouldn’t go anywhere that he wouldn’t be able to watch out for me, my Mom and my Sister if there was any other choice.

I’ve experienced my Dad’s presence first hand when running. I talk to him, ask him questions, seek guidance. Back in October I stopped a little park down the road during my run for a cigarette. Yeah I know how stupid that sounds; it wasn’t something I was proud of at the time either. It was a nasty habit I had picked back up during the high stress time of my Father’s passing and hadn’t been able to kick. I was battling and struggling with it big time, and I needed to quit again before the next stage of this weight loss journey could begin for me. I asked my Dad for help, asked is putting it nicely, I pretty much raged on him for leaving me before I could finish this journey with him and told him that helping me with this was the least he could do!

Two days later I woke up with the idea of smoking non tobacco non nicotine cigarettes until I could kick the need to have one in my hands. I did that for a couple of weeks, they were nasty, and I’ve been a non-smoker again for officially 2 months now.

Alas, I get side tracked; I could talk about my Father all day. But life is stressful for me right now. My schedule is so full, and everything is coming so fast, and everything costs so much money.

My “Second Father” or my “Other Dad” as I like to call him, Tom, a Man whose been a part of my life since I was 18 and been there for me in more ways than you could ever ask someone too, has decided to visit for his birthday. He’ll be arriving on the 28th and here until the 5th.

Then I leave for Pittsburgh PA on the 8th to go help my girlfriend Heather pack all her stuff up and move to Oregon. I’m super excited and crazy jazzed to have her moving here. She came to visit over the Thanksgiving Holiday and I realized how much I missed having girlfriends to do stuff with. She and I should be back before the beginning of February which is when the first of my reconstructive plastic surgery surgeries should be starting. Then I’ve got my Mom and Aunt CherRel planning a trip here in May, which is when I’m attempted to do a half a marathon with my Trainer Suzie over at Tym 4 Me Fitness, her and her clients did it last year and I’m going to do my best to join them this year! And then we’ll be right about the time for my second set of reconstructive surgery. Not to mention during all this time I’m going to be studying and getting my ISSA Certification to become a personal trainer myself. My 2012 is packed full! It’s overwhelming to me!

And none of this is coming cheap! I’m trying to look at all of it as a career investment, I need to fix my body to make working as a personal trainer and going back to help other Morbidly Obese people the way I want too, and of course I need the ISSA Certification to do that as well. I think at first I’ll just be taking their Fitness course so I can get to work right away but I think that in the next few years I actually want to do get an Associate’s Degree in Exercise Science! I have big goals! I know, but they are all pretty achievable if I can just figure out the financial part. Lots of people take thousands of dollars in loans to go back to school and get their education, I’m still young, 35 isn’t THAT old, I can do this! If ANYONE out there has any suggestions or skills at finding grants and stuff to help pay for women going back to school I’d really appreciate some help!

Okay, it’s time to start getting stuff together for my run today. I’m attempting my first 7 mile day today! Wish me luck! I’ll let you all know how it goes later!

Share this:

Like this:

It never is right? There is a saying by Aldous Huxley, no clue who that is, I’ll have to do some research, but they said “Hell isn’t merely paved with good intentions; its walled and roofed with them. Yes, furnished too.”

That’s how I feel, of course, I realize that I’ve failed to actually keep up with my good intentions, but I’m ready to re-direct. Let me explain what happens a bit, because I think this happens to a lot of people… pre-op my entire focus was on weight loss and surgery and doing what I needed to do to get the weight off. It was easy for me to sit here for hours and hours each day, reading anything I could find online about weight loss, weight loss surgery, and such. I spent a ton of time on WLS forums, talking back and forth with people, learning from them, trying to help the newer members of the community. I took pictures of my food, and I tried to share every detail of my life, from food intake to exercise to medical information, then suddenly life started happening to me, my Father and passed away and keeping up on a daily blog seemed really unimportant when what I wanted my focus on was being out living life.

Life for me today is so different, I’m getting ready to start posting actual photos with my blogs, like pictures of me… LOL this is an amazing feat for me let me tell you, at first I had no intentions of posting pictures of myself accept maybe the obligatory before and after, but I’m finding now that I’m more willing to put myself out there, that probably has something to do with the fact that I don’t weight 420lbs anymore eh?

I’ve decided to start making blogging more of a focus for me, because quite honestly I just don’t think that there are enough people out there that keep up with it after they have their surgery and lose their weight and I know that I still have a ton of questions on a daily basis, things I’m looking for answers for on the way out.

Running is my new thing, for those of you that don’t know. I had to take a break from working with my Trainer Suzie from Tym 4 Me Fitness because of Financial reasons, I’m getting very very close to having plastics and the financial devastation that is about to cause our household is something I feel terrible guilty over, the fact that my Family is ready and willing to make so many sacrifices in order to help me get my life back and move forward with my goals brings tears to my eyes. So in lieu of working out with Suzie I’ve picked up running. I’m currently in the process of doing a couch to 5k training program, even though it’s a little too easy for me. I’ll tell you all about the App later when I’ve had some time to use it and decide what I think. Today’s work out was amazing though I was out the door at 9am, never thought I’d see the day that I was eager to go outside and exercise when it was 37 degrees outside, but here it was. I walked for a bit, did a 1.5 mile run and then did the week 1 day 1 session for the couch to 5k trainer and walked home for just a little over 5 miles total distance. I’m trying to work up to 7 miles a day right now, I’ll get there 😀

Alas, my protein infused hot chocolate, which consists of 2 cups of So Delicious Mint Chocolate Coconut Milk warmed up to give you that Christmas feel and then about half a serving of Protein Powder mixed in with a whisk, is about gone and it is time to get my day started. The Hot Chocolate definitely has me feeling warm and fuzzy inside I think I’ll throw on some Christmas music, try to clear my desk of some projects and get a little house work done before lunch.